That’s a bit of a misleading title, because this isn’t really a primer.

A few days ago, I talked a friend into trying Bloodborne, and watching him play through the opening bits made me want to play them again. I was having a tough time justifying this, but then I decided to actually record them and post them, with annotations, in a way that will hopefully help anyone new to the title get over the first “hump”, which is playing the game up to the point where you can spend blood echoes to boost your stats and gain levels.

So, I started the game, made a character, got killed by the werewolf in the clinic and got sent to the Hunter’s Dream, picked up some weapons (axe, pistol) and then went back to Yharnam for another pass. I did not return to the Hunter’s Dream at any point (though I dearly could have used some more pebbles) and I deliberately didn’t explore much. There are a bunch of secrets just in this opening bit that I didn’t want to spoil.

It would have been much cooler if I’d done it without dying. I left that bit in just because I was zipping along and just feeling altogether too smug about myself and then I pulled a ton of roamers and ate pavement.

I made liberal use of annotations during these videos, which apparently don’t work on mobile. Best viewed on your home PC, then.

So, without further ado:

Part 1, in which I die at the end:

Part 2, the Yharnam Streets take two:

Part 3, Courtyard and Werewolves:

Part 4, fighting the Cleric Beast. I’m really not proud of this video, I used so many blood vials during the fight.

So, with the exception of some truly awful footwork during the boss fight, I’m pretty happy with these as a “how to get started”. Now that it’s a $20 budget title, I expect a lot of folks will get to try it for the first time, and I envy those people.